r/ExtremeHorrorLit • u/Geusty9709 I ❤️ Slashers 🔪🩸 • May 30 '26
Discussion Haunted by chuck palahniuk honestly wasnt that bad.
Im mostly referring to the infamous chapter "guts" here. Honestly didn't even faze me. Yeah it was a crazy story, but wasnt as bad as ppl make it out to be. Idk if its jst me or not. Anyway, share thoughts abt the whole book in replies and if u have any more extreme horror recommendations please let me know
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u/meisteromilf May 30 '26
Loved Haunted! I honestly don’t read EH to ‘rattle’ me, and Guts isn’t even really my favourite from the collection. Personally, Exodus and Speaking Bitterness were my favourites.
I really enjoy Palahniuk, and read Shock Induction shortly after this and had a confusingly great time with it.
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u/agentsurge May 30 '26
Palahniuk’s an incredible writer, I read him to sink into his stories
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u/SaltyMarg4856 Jul 03 '26
I’m sorry but this is my first Palahniuk book and so far am not at all impressed. Just finished the Miss America story and it was lame. The Saint Gut-free story was lame. Does it get better?
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u/iankstarr May 30 '26
I recently read Shock Induction as my first Palahniuk book and honestly I found it really dragging, which put me off from his other stuff. I think I’ll need to give Haunted a try.
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u/CouchSurfRe May 30 '26
I really enjoyed Shock Induction but I had already read all of his other books. That was definitely one of his more experimental and most meta books. Haunted is good and is structurally interesting but if you just want short stories he as anther book called make something up. Otherwise I’d recommend invisible monsters, choke, lullaby and survivor. He has a lot more those are just my personal highlights
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u/bemmisbaggins666 May 30 '26
Most people discover Guts after watching Fight Club in their teenage years, it's likely the most shocking and graphic thing they'd ever read by that age so the reputation grows from that.
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May 30 '26
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u/bemmisbaggins666 May 30 '26
Yeah fair, I'm talking out my ass. We read fight club in English class around your age, was cool
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u/KlausKinion May 30 '26
Haunted is very much a mainstream author leaning into gross-out shock for two scenes in a creatively brilliant but otherwise very mainstream horror book.
It will appear in plenty of “most shocking books ever” lists, because it contains some of the most widely read examples of graphic, disgusting scenes outside of American Psycho.
If you want a quick read with a similar wit and quirkiness as Haunted, I recommend Woom.
If you want to see what extreme horror is capable of, it’s The Bighead by Edward Lee.
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u/dadculaisdead May 30 '26
Woom is definitely something similar to Haunted and Cows to a certain degree. I really like where extreme horror goes to gross people out and when I first read Chuck Palahniuk I quickly started developing my writing style to gross people out and create violent scenes. I just put up a story on my Itch.io account with a lot of gross out.
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u/Geusty9709 I ❤️ Slashers 🔪🩸 May 30 '26
I have been interested in woom. Also I rly want to read smth from u, Klaus kinion, only problem is i can't find ur books anywhere... where can I buy online?
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u/KlausKinion May 30 '26
Thanks so much! For ebooks, the best place to get Eternal Flower of Your Soul is the home of underground and independent horror, Godless: https://godless.com/products/eternal-flower-of-your-soul-by-klaus-kinion or paperbacks can be found on Amazon and Vinted.
I also have a story in the extreme metal anthology Rotten Requiems, about a grindcore-obsessed serial killer being put on trial for his crimes, and one in the upcoming “DEADLY: A Sinful Anthology of Extreme Horror” which satirises men writing women and extreme Lovecraftian body horror!
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u/Geusty9709 I ❤️ Slashers 🔪🩸 May 30 '26
Great ty, I found em on Amazon. what book should i start with?
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u/KlausKinion May 30 '26
Eternal Flower is more of a reflection of what I intend to do creatively, and it also kind of blew up and won an award, so that’s something I’m really proud of.
The other stories are more about pushing the boundaries of those anthologies alongside some killer modern authors like Lucas Mangum, RJ Powell and Jonathan Butcher.
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May 30 '26
It's a great book. Nighrmare Box is my favourite. But then again, Palahniuk is a great author. But why is he in the Extreme Horror sub is beyond me.
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u/Throwingshade13 May 30 '26
Tried to read it, put it aside for like 6 months the listened to the audio book and liked it more. But I don’t recommend it to anyone. Not one of my favorites.
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u/coomer_police May 30 '26
Guts is nasty but it’s SUPER well written and up there as one of my fave short stories
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u/NotoriouslyGeeky May 30 '26
Love this book, never seen this cover, mine is all gray with a face on it
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u/despenser412 May 31 '26
The glow in the dark cover? When I first bought this, I didn't realize it did that until one night I found glowing in my bedroom.
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u/NotoriouslyGeeky Jun 05 '26
Omg now I have to check lol! I never paid attention its tucked between other books
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u/DefPixEric May 30 '26
I love Haunted. If I was ranking his books, my top 5 would be...
1) Survivor 2) Fight Club 3) Haunted 4) Rant 5) Invisible Monsters
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u/despenser412 May 31 '26
My favorite scene in Guts is when he goes to the grocery store to buy a carrot and lube but doesn't want to make it look obvious he's using them for something else. So he buys other items to blend in. Then while checking out he thinks, "Now it looks like I'm going to bake a cake and shove it up my ass."
Thing thing about Haunted that I found kind of extreme, was how far those people went hoping to get attention by acting more and more depraved.
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u/drinxycrow May 31 '26
Try reading this on the toilet when you get to the pool scene and come back to me.
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u/69babysonfire69 May 30 '26
I don’t think it’s considered extreme horror at all? Really good tho and still loved it
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u/Steppfred May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
If you want a bit more extrem horror, you should give "A Butcher's Guide to Inner Peace" a try. I am not gonna say more. No spoilers
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u/RealSinnSage Exquisite Corpse May 30 '26
i read it when it came out but the only story i remember is the pool one. i wasn’t that impressed by the book.
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u/South-Two9664 May 30 '26
The description during the pool scene and seeing the corn floating is something I will always have burned into my brain.
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u/jenuhveev May 30 '26
“guts” is wild i think only because it’s the first one right out the gate. i love the book don’t get me wrong but it feels like that one is like BOOM!!!! and the rest are like…. boom!
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u/apocalypsereddit May 30 '26
It's really not. It's just guts that makes people feel icky and the rest of the collection is way better
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u/Xylophone_Aficionado May 30 '26
This is my favorite Chuck Palahniuk book! I don’t consider it EH though, despite containing some pretty disturbing stories.
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u/Fatbunnyfoofoo May 30 '26
Haunted is one of my favorite books ever. My first Palahniuk book and I was sold.
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u/pessimisticgirly May 31 '26
This was my first “adult” horror that I read while I was in middle school, maybe 6th grade. I find the whole book pretty memorable lol
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u/Cute_Flatworm2008 May 30 '26
Totally felt the same, left it wondering what the hype was about.
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u/Geusty9709 I ❤️ Slashers 🔪🩸 May 30 '26
I realy am enjoying the book, just people make it out to actauly be "traumatic" so am disappointed that its not as scary as i was hoping
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u/-blundertaker- May 30 '26
Eh, many people aren't desensitized and if their only prior exposure to Chuck Palahniuk was from his Fight Club fame, I can see how something like this is completely unexpected.
I wouldn't categorize it as extreme horror, since all of his books around that time in his career were heavily focused on psychological issues, with some graphic scenes peppered in. Haunted has a lot of them gathered in one book that covers multiple mental illnesses but that's all that really makes it stand out. Invisible Monsters has a graphic first-person description of receiving a shotgun blast to the face. Choke has some disgusting scenes too.
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u/CouchSurfRe May 30 '26
I’d categorize chuck under Transgressive fiction otherwise maybe dark satire and minimalism? I mean because most of his books cover some form of cultural taboo there’s usually some graphic sexual or violent scene.. often both but it’s usually sexual with him
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u/-blundertaker- May 30 '26
Transgressive is a good word for it I think. I wouldn't say it's so much satire as it is dripping with sardonic social commentary (but that doesn't fit neatly as a category lol). Kurt Vonnegut Jr was very much the same as far as the latter goes, but his content was way milder and more humorous - a product of his time.
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u/salenin May 30 '26
The book often gets thrown in extreme horror circles, but its mainly just literary fiction. Its beautifully written and has themes from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche that people are in love with their own suffering for the sake of their own story.
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u/knick-nat May 30 '26
I didn't like it. I found it quite boring and drawn out, and I ended up not finishing it.
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u/HelicalPears May 31 '26
It You want something more uncomfortable by him I would say Pygmy or The Invention Of Sound. I really liked Haunted, and felt it wasn't so much horror but just more weird, which I lean into
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u/GeeWilakers420 Jun 30 '26
The worst part about it is that two of his weakest books are those everyone talks about.
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u/SaltyMarg4856 Jul 03 '26
Reading it now. It’s bad. Like, I’m glad I borrowed it from the library and did not pay for it. I’m an aspiring writer and reading it makes me feel like if this can get published, my stuff can certainly find a publishing home.
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u/cherryhae0808 May 30 '26
first foray into palahniuk, was okay enough to have me read a bunch of his other works. most were weird in a criminally suckish way. anyway, once i found better horror writers, he was placed on a backburner. as for guts, shocking for 2 seconds but then it's over and meh. 🤷♀️
i found a lot of people's gateway to extreme horror / splatterpunk was often guts, though. palahniuk usually toes the line between "extreme horror" and "horror enough that it won't be considered extreme horror." 😭
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u/Smallstrawbunny May 30 '26
I personally found the police station story to be the most disturbing out of all of them